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Sunday, 10 January 2016

Literacy activities for Primary School - Reading and Spelling ideas

Although I am not currently teaching Primary School, I trained as a Primary School Teacher and taught 5 year olds for 3 years. I also collected and created teaching resources throughout my training and teaching, which I still have.

I have a friend who is about to start her Primary School training, and I told her that I would send her photos of my resources that she may be able to use for ideas and teaching. But then I thought that putting them up on here would be a much better idea, for sorting, organising and sharing.

Feel free to use and copy ideas, or adapt to suit your own classroom.You can find ideas for math resources and games which I have created, here.

Tumble Board Ideas



Some of my Tumble Board activities for literacy.  I had a variety of ways children could practice their spelling words: using magnetic letters, alphabet beads, chalk boards, felt letters, and cut and paste using newspapers and magazines.

Ways for children to practice reading: reading to a puppet, to a buddy, by themselves; reading nursery rhymes.

Ways to practice knowledge: playing reading games such as Bingo, Scrabble, matching games, doing puzzles, etc.

I had created games for different reading levels of words. It was simply high frequency words written on cards, and children could either play Snap!, Memory, or Fish using the word cards.
 


I found children often confused letters p, d, and b.  I created this resource to help support their learning and knowledge about these letters.
It consists of a variety of pictures and words of objects starting with the letters B, D, and P, with the word written underneath.
I made a sheet (we also did this on the wall) where children could sort the pictures by the initial letter,
They then wrote the words out on the corresponding form, to help them practice their letter formation of b, d and p.

Re-Making Sentences

A follow on activity for beginner readers... cutting the words up, and children have to put them in order to make sense.
















Contractions.
This activity was created to help children practice their knowledge of contractions. Simple game with a contraction on one card and the full words on another card, and children have to match up the contraction to the words.




Magic E:   Words with 'e' on the end

Learning about Magic E. Can be used with whole class, or small group, or children practicing with a buddy..
Magic e comes along and asks the vowel to say his name.

Simple to create:  Cards with CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words written on them; pegs with 'e' stuck on the end. I used a punch to punch shapes out of card, wrote 'e' on them, laminated them and taped them onto pegs.
When you put Magic E on the end of the word, it changes the word from 'mad' to 'made'.





Word Ending Activity

Activity to support children learning about word endings...
consists of a variety of simple verbs;
cards with a variety of word endings - er, s, ing.

Children put words together with a word ending and write them down on their sheet.

The drawback with this is that some words change according to the word ending, eg swim, swims, swam, swimming; cry, cried, cries, crying.




Making Words

I printed cards with an initial letter on one card (consonant), and a word ending (vowel, consonant) on another card. The animals are either on the beginning or end of the card to show whether it is a beginning letter or word ending.

Children create words by combining an initial letter with a word ending.  They can then write down their words on a recording sheet or in their books.







 Pictures

When I was at University, my English lecturer told us that we needed lots of pictures as resources.  They can be used for oral language, writing prompts, story prompts. I collected pictures from National Geographic magazines, adverts in magazines, and local newspaper photos. I mounted most of mine on card.


I used this box of pictures with my 5 year olds to stimulate oral language. We would talk about what was happening in the picture; use the different thinking hats when looking at pictures; or make up a story about what was happening in the picture.

I also had pictures of animals and objects, and children would play 20 Questions games and "Give Us A Clue" games, where one child would select a picture and the other children had to guess what it was.




 




 
Choices
What do children do if they have finished their work early?
I collected this range of ideas from the various placements that I went on, as well as adding some ideas of my own. This is by no means an exhaustive list of ideas, but it is a start of ideas.
Do not have them all up on the wall - change your Choices for Early Finishers on a regular basis - daily or weekly.

 

  Spelling

Children learn to spell by repetition. I tried to find as many different ways for children to practice spelling their words as possible - I endeavour to find different ways to teach the same thing.

Some ways my children would practice their spelling words would be:
* using felt letters on a flannel board
* magnetic letters
* chalk board
* rainbow writing - writing their words using different coloured pencils or pens
* cut and paste - cut the letters out of magazines and newspapers and paste on their recording sheet.
* writing their words in chalk on the fence or pavement outside


 

 

Spelling Ideas for Older Children
A variety of ways to further practice their spelling words, breaking them down, pulling them apart, using them, and finding out their meanings.  Again, as with the Choices Menu, don't have them all up on the wall for children to choose from - either have a select few on the wall for children to choose from and change on a regular basis, or have a 'hat' where children pull an option out of the hat.

Opposites: Bingo Game

 I have always loved opposites and playing around with words.

I created this Bingo game using opposites.  The teacher says a word, and if a child has the opposite of that word, they cross it out/place a counter on it.  If they fill up their line, they shout Bingo!

The word cards have the opposite word written on them for easy reference when checking.
If teaching about language and the different types of words, you could also make up Bingo games for: onomatopoeia (words such as Splash, bang pop etc); verbs; adjectives; nouns; different words for 'said'; homographs; etc.
These games and activities are ones that I have created to help support my children's learning; but there are lots of fabulous websites with loads of ideas and downloads for supporting learning.
Some of my favourite sites that I have used over and over again:



Click on the link for more of my teaching resources

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